SPEAKER_00 0:00

Men welcome to the most important podcast that you'll hear in a long time. It's the Men's Leadership Community Podcast, and it starts now.

SPEAKER_05 0:16

Well, Obi, bittersweet, bittersweet when we come up to the to the end of the at the movie series, and it's been another great run, JB. You know, you talk about picking the different movies that we look at. We always look at seven different genres. So it's always a seven-week series, Obi. We pick seven different genres of movies, and we started with The Mission with Robert De Niro, and we're ending with First Blood Rambo with still Sylvester Stallone. So really you can kind of see from a very straightforward, Christian-oriented movie to what most men think of as an action film, which really isn't. Uh, and then everything in between. So I think once again, it's been another great series and love picking these with you, Obi, and praying over them and thinking about what in the world are we going to do with these and how are we going to help men grow into their hero's journey in Jesus Christ. And what a great one to end on today. So, just any thoughts from you personally on uh finally getting this is year three. Can you believe that? This is the third year we've done this, and you're finally getting first blood in there. So I think you you were after me last year, and I said, No, not we're not not yet. And then we got to this year, and I couldn't, I I tried to talk him off the ledge once again, but he got me into it and and I said, Yes, we'll definitely hit it this year.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

So and what a ride it is, right? It is, it has it really is to me the epitome of what we talk about here. It is that what we are all about at the MLC, and we hope you guys get to see that as we grow on. Just a little disclaimer, we are probably gonna go over because yeah, it it would, it would we just we just wouldn't do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:50

Well, we just get too excited, and all of a sudden we're 16 again and we're in the movie theater, you know, watching First Blood for the first time, going, wow, I gotta win it. Let's go back next Friday. So yeah. And you know, this this movie is so powerful and and yet so subtle at what it does sometimes. You look at this first title slide. This is one of the theat, you know, theatrical release posters from 1982, and it says First Blood, one war against one man. And you know, you would think, oh, this is a war against John Rambo. No, this is John Rambo's war against himself. At the end of the day, is what this movie really becomes about is he's warring with himself as a lone wolf, and what that means to come back from Vietnam and be so lonely, uh, and not have anyone to be able to reach out to, which we'll see by the end of the movie. You see the, you know, you finally see that war come to an end with Troutman, where he finally has somebody that'll actually hold him, Obi. So we're giving that away a little bit at the beginning, but I love that line: one war against one man, you're like, me against the world. No, it's me against me when I'm living the lone wolf lifestyle. What do you think of that, Obi?

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah, no, and again, we always, you know, you always make a reference to this when we talk about the MLC and about what genuine manhood is. Like we get this idea, you know, that you know, this is John John McClain, you know, Rambo out there taking on the world, but there is it, it isn't. We weren't designed to do this movie, it's not about that. This is not is not about this movie's not about one guy uh's ability to take on the whole world. It's not it's pretty cool that he has those skills, but it is absolutely is, but it you missed the whole point of the movie. You gloss right over that because it's not about that, you know, it's about what one lone man needs.

SPEAKER_05 3:41

Yeah, what he's going through on the interior battle that he has within himself, and all men have an interior battle that's going on. You know, one of the things we share with the MLC is the reality of the old man battling against the new man in Christ each and every day. And that's kind of what we see in this movie, also. You know, thinking about the lone wolf, I guess we'll have to think forward to next year. One of these years we're actually gonna have to cover Lone Wolf McQueen just to get a Chuck Norris film in there and actually to get a lone wolf reference in a movie title. So uh this might open the the gateway for that, Obi. But let's go ahead and get started on some background on the movie itself.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

1982 American action film starring Sylvester Stallone as a Vietnam War veteran, John Rambo. It's based on the 1972 novel of the same story by David Morrell. It follows Rambo, who, after entering a small town and clashing with a local sheriff, attempts to fight uh in order to survive a manhunt using his expertise in survival and combat skills. It course co-stars Richard Crana as Rambo's mentor, Colonel Sam Troutman, and Brian Denehy as Sheriff William, which Teazel, Tazel, um Teazel, he which I love him, he's a great actor. Uh various scripts adapted from Morrell's book have been pitched to studios in the year since its publication, but only Stallone's involvement prompted its production. He's there was he was a big name at the time.

SPEAKER_05 5:09

It was, and this is the power of storytelling and story writing. Uh, this this story could not get off the ground since 1972 because nobody could get the script the right way to be able to actually present it in movie form. So, what did they do? They went and found a guy who won an Oscar for his screenplay and his own story for Rocky. Don't forget, so Esther Stallone's not just an action star, he's a hell of a writer. Uh so he wrote the story for Rocky, he wrote the screenplay. They they went finally got to Stallone. He took hold of the script and rewrote the screenplay for the movie, and all of a sudden, it was something that could be produced and actually come to the screen. So the power of the hero's journey and the ability to write a good story that that transfers it from a novel to the to the screen was a big deal on why this this would not have happened without still Sylvester Stallone and his skill of story writing, Obi.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Oh, yeah, yeah. And you know, it has everything to do with uh the time since the end of the Vietnam War, uh, and Stallone's star power after the success of Rocky, which enabled him to rewrite the script to make Rambo more sympathetic and really a story that would tugged at the hearts of people.

SPEAKER_05 6:21

Yeah, because in the original novel, he's a little bit more psychotic and a little more cold-blooded killer. Uh, and Sylvester Stallone said, No, we don't want to do that with our war heroes. We want to celebrate the reality of the battle that they're going through when they come back home and do it well.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Yeah. Stallone and the producers, they wanted to make Rambo a different character in the film than he was in the book. They didn't want him to be psycho, like you said, a cold-blooded killer. They wanted to portray him as a man who was lost and didn't know what to do with his life. And of course, he becomes a victim of unfortunate circumstances.

SPEAKER_05 6:55

And that that's any guy on the call right here. Any guy on the call, we go through moments in our hero's journey where we're lost, we don't know what to do with our lives, and we become victims of the circumstances that are swirling all around us. We come become very reactive to the things that are happening to us instead of proactive and actually, you know, taking charge of the things that are going on around us.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Yep. The film success spawned the Rambo franchise consisting of four sequels, an animated TV series, a comic book series, a novel series, and several video games. Of course, it received mixed reviews from critics. However, the three lead actors all received praise for their performances.

SPEAKER_05 7:52

And they do. I mean, those three actors, they're the ones that make the movie. There's no doubt. You know, and and for Denna He to come in and just play such a jerk, such a jerkwater town jerk, you know, is pretty awful. So pretty awesome of how he did that.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Uh, the film, it was shot in Fraser Valley of British Columbia on a $15 million budget beginning on November 15, 1981, and continuing until April 1982. It was released in the United States on October 22nd, 1982. The initial reviews were mixed, but the film was a box office success, grossing 160.3 million worldwide and becoming the 13th uh highest-grossing film at the domestic box office for the year and the seventh highest-grossing film worldwide. Uh in 1985, it also became the first Hollywood blockbuster to be released in China, holding the record for the largest number of tickets sold for an American film, 76 million, until 2018, guys.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Isn't that crazy? For the number most number of tickets sold in China for a movie until 2018.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

That's big. Since its release, it has been reappraised by critics with many highlighting the roles of Stallone, Denahy, and Krina, and recognizing it as an influential film in the action genre.

unknown 9:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

You'll see why here in a minute.

SPEAKER_05 9:12

People, yeah. People actually, and the reappraisal came back as they actually understood the story better. Yeah, it's not just an action film.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Uh, after watching the original cut of the film, which was over three hours long, Stallone and his agent claimed that the film was so bad that it made them physically sick. Stallone altered uh fear the film would kill his career, and he attempted to buy all the footage so he could destroy it.

SPEAKER_05 9:42

Have you ever loved something and been passionate about it so much that when it turned out like a piece of poop, you you wanted to make sure nobody else saw it?

SPEAKER_03 9:52

When he couldn't do that, the he suggested that the producers cut much of his part and left the rest of the characters tell the story. And after heavy edits, the film was cut down to 93 minutes and set a precedent for future action movies.

SPEAKER_05 10:08

So it went from something he wanted to burn to actually being the model of what action films through the 80s and 90s were going to look like from then on.

SPEAKER_03 10:16

Wow. In 2008, it was named the 253rd Greatest Film Ever by Empire Magazine on its 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. And in 2015, Rolling Stones ranked the movie at number seven of the 10 best action movies of all time.

SPEAKER_05 10:33

Yeah, so it's still standing the test of time for action films. Well, give us a little bit of trivia. I love this. I put it right in the middle for you, Obi. Your love of Betamax? Yes, uh, actually found its way into one of our conversations.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

You know, and uh you guys know that I have a love of the vintage, you know, and you can see that you know that I still have my vintage setup right here with my vintage TV. So the name Rambo came from a variety of apples of the same name. Uh in 1982 Club International article, Stallone thanked Celery for his ripped physique. And he was, boy, was he ripped. Um, he alleged in the article that he ate only the vegetable and drank celery juice for several weeks prior to filming. Um, first blood is one of the top 10 most rented video titles ever in the Betamax format. We usually we actually had a Betamax uh cassette player. John Rambo is also the name of an American athlete who won a bronze medal in high jump at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

SPEAKER_05 11:42

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

On August 14th, 2020, a cedar wood statue of Rambo by Ryan Villers was unveiled in Hope, Canada, 38 years after the film's release.

SPEAKER_05 11:53

Yeah, and you'll see that's the name of the town where the movie was filmed. Uh, so there's this amazing wood sculpture of Rambo in Hope, Canada.

SPEAKER_03 12:02

Look at it. Look at this guy. Look at all the look at all these faces, guys. Okay, these were all Rambo.

SPEAKER_05 12:10

Uh and who's the first one that they wanted? Here it is, Elliot, right here, your buddy from Houston, Texas.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

James Garter, uh, a veteran of the Korean War with two purple hearts, turned it down as he did not want to play him in, who comes home from war and starts fighting cops. Robert De Niro, Clean Eastwood, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, James Conn, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Al Pacino, Jeff Bridges, Nick Nolte, Chris Christofsson, Ryan O'Neal, John Travolta, Powers Booth, Brad Davies, Dustin Hubman were all considered before Sly got the parked.

SPEAKER_05 12:46

You know, and that's pretty funny because you're like, you start to read through this list of names, and half of them you'd be like, why in the world would they have chosen that guy for a war movie or a you know an action movie? Well, each and every one of them have played a soldier. Isn't that crazy to think? So, you know, and the one that was the least recognizable for me is right under Power's booth. That's Chris Christofferson, uh, which is crazy to think of him without, you know, kind of the long hair uh musician look. So pretty cool. And then, of course, Nick Nolte. I never I never remembered, I had to go back and look. I never remembered Nick Nolte ever being ripped. Well, look at that. There's Nick Nolte cut up. Must have must have been on Celery.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

So Chris Chris Christofferson was actually a West Point graduate.

SPEAKER_05 13:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

And he was a Vietnam era veteran. Well, but he didn't he didn't see Vietnam combat. He taught at West Point afterwards.

SPEAKER_05 13:40

Yeah, yeah. And and all the, you know, over half these guys were actually in the service too, Dave. So that's the other side of it. So pretty cool to think. Well, here's a couple more with Sheriff Teasel and Colonel Troutman. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Uh consider for the role for Sheriff Teasel before Brian Denig got the role were Bert Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, and Charles Durning. How about that?

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Yeah, could you imagine? Remember Charles Derning as the governor of Texas and best little whorehouse in Texas dancing across the state capitol? I think Rambo would have been a little bit, first blood would have been a little bit different with Charles Durning in there.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

I I thought I always thought Gene Hackman could have could have handled that one. Yeah, Julian and had some chops.

SPEAKER_05 14:26

Gene Hackman could handle anything.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

It's a shame we lost him. So it would have been more of a comedy than it would have been a yeah, but Gene Gene Hackman played the same kind of character in Clay Acewood's movie, uh Unforgiven. Was it the same guy?

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Yeah, he does. He does. Uh considered for the role of Samuel Troutman before Richard Krino was called in to fill the role, were George Seascott, Lee Marvin, and Michael Douglas.

SPEAKER_05 14:55

You know, kind of funny. So Michael Douglas actually got the role, uh, and he was on site filming on day one, got in a fight about the script with the producers and with Sylvester Salone of what he saw in what he wanted for Colonel Troutman, and walked off the set. And they they had to call Richard Krinna, fly him in in an emergency, and in the entire first scene that we see Richard Krna in as Colonel Samuel Troutman, somebody just off scene is actually whispering his lines to him because he hadn't even seen the script yet. And he's repeating the lines that he's hearing. And I just thought that was just what an amazing actor. You know, that he just showed up and they're like, dude, you gotta be right here, and uh, you know, we'll give you the lines, you do them. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:43

It's great. Uh, Richard Kino would later spoof his Colonel Troutman character in the classic Hot Shots Part Du 1993.

SPEAKER_05 15:54

I forget that Keen, Charlie Sheen was ever ripped, but he was in Hot Shots Part Du. I guess that was before uh, you know, some of the uh what do they call it, gear set in and changed the way he looked. So isn't that what the kids call it today? Gear? Uh-huh. All the drugs. Yeah. Man, you're pretty up.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

I was trying to be hip. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You got it. You got it. Yeah. Uh Stallone sustained serious back injury and several broken ribs performing his own stunt of dropping off a cliff and into a tree.

SPEAKER_05 16:26

So he actually broke his ribs and threw his back out of whack. So that's literally him on the setup there, you know, with the uh EMTs that had to come and help him out. That bruise is real.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Yeah. Denehey shattered his ribs when he did his own stunt falling through the ceiling of the police station and landing on the concrete floor.

SPEAKER_05 16:47

Yeah. So when you see him bounce off of the desk and onto the floor, he broke his ribs bouncing off the desk.

SPEAKER_03 16:54

Yeah. Uh a Navy SEAL was brought in to show Stallone how to get away from the group of police officers who were detaining Rambo. The actors on set were convinced they could hold him with all of them ganging up, but the SEO laid out about three of them.

SPEAKER_05 17:09

So just like in the scene, he actually laid out all three of them who went at him at once to see if they could do it.

SPEAKER_03 17:15

Uh, this was a good one. Stallone accidentally broke the nose of Humphrey, Lester, during the jail escape scene by Elbow him in the face, which is why he's seen wearing a band-aid through the rest of the film. So that was not supposed to happen. No, but it worked out really well, you know. Uh, and of course the squad car slipped down the hill sideways. Um, was an accident, and they kept it in the finished film, and they just put Dena Denahae put him in the overturned vehicle to continue the scene.

SPEAKER_05 17:42

Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. Hey, let's just use this. Yeah. Couple more.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Stallone personally selected famed knife maker Jimmy Lyle to design and create the iconic knife used by Rambo. And all six knives were created for the film. The survival knife became an iconic, iconic movie weapon in July 28th, 2013. Auction the original knife and its sheath were sold for $92,000. And even a set of 100 replicas of the knife produced by Lally in 1982 have been valued $45,000 each. Um, not to be confused with the ones that we had when I was little that we tried to chop in a tree with and it shattered.

SPEAKER_05 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:26

The piece of canvas Rambo Grabs was actually found by Stallone while shooting. The prop became a very protected item on the set. Stallone still keeps it at his home. How cool is that? Uh, in January 1982, over $50,000 worth of firearms were stolen from the set, although the guns had been modified to shoot blanks. The Royal Canadian Mountain Mounted Police claimed that they could easily be modified to fire live rounds. And so, after the incident, the set was guarded by the Canadian Army.

SPEAKER_05 18:56

That's pretty cool trivia. So there's some pretty neat things. And when have we had Kim Jong ill as a part of our trivia on a Friday morning? But here we go.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yep. The stories in Rambo's final monologue are real stories. Stallone.

SPEAKER_05 19:10

Yeah, those are real stories he got from veterans. So when he's doing that powerful final scene with Troutman and he's telling the stories of his buddies and what's happened to him, those are actually true stories from Vietnam.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Stallone notes that there are four or five moments in the actor's career where they drop all of their guards and let the scene and character completely take him. His performance in the final moments of First Blood is one of those points in his career Stallone still points to.

SPEAKER_05 19:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

Yeah. This is the first time that a Rocky film and a Rambo film were released in the same year. Rocky III and First Blood were both released in 1982. The second time a Rocky film and a Rambo film were released in the same year was in 1985, Rocky IV, and Rambo First Blood, Part 2. I think Stallone was making a little bit of cash in the 80s. He was. Yeah. According to kidnaps to a kidnapped South Korean filmmaker, Shin Sang O, this was one of Kim Jong il's favorite movies. Shin said Kim tries to understand capitalism through movies, but he doesn't know what a f what fiction is. He looks at these movies as if they were rec records of reality.

SPEAKER_05 20:20

Which can be a little bit of a problem, and maybe why maybe why South Korea has a problem with the United States of America when it's seen through, you know, somebody that can't tell the difference between reality. So yeah. Uh hold on. My my cursor did it again, Obi. Oh man. Yeah, I don't know what's happening today. Huh. Time for can't make it. Time for a new laptop. I guess it is. Hold on one second. Obi, keep going for a sec.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I will as I said, this was an iconic movie that that changed really the way movies were made. It had a huge impact in my life. And again, I'm I'm in I'm in fifth grade watching this. I and it's crazy to me that we watched this movie when I was I had to have been like nine years old, I think. I I don't know, but it was in Mexico. And again, we paid. And I know that some of y'all here was it also was also impactful, but it really allowed um um allowed other movies to kind of set the to kind of take off of this template for action movies. And a lot of what was done in this movie because it was condensed to 93 minutes, was picked up by a lot of movies, and it's really what drives the way action movies were made really for the next for the next decade.

SPEAKER_05 21:39

OB, I'm sorry I'm gonna have to cut out for just a second again. I'll be right back, brother.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

No problem. Terry said, oh no, it was Caesar, uh said he was an extra in a movie starring Chris Kristofsen called Two for Texas, which has always been a bucket list of of items. But I want to go back to some of the comments that we had. I know Steve McNeese really talked about something really that um where made a comment where Vietnam movies were taboo uh for many years after the conflict. And then this movie and Uncommon Valor were a couple of the first movies that really broke that, you know, that taboo part of it and really allowed, you know, opened a lot of discussion into that and shed light on some of the reality of Vietnam. And I think First Blood did it in a really, really, um, really healthy way. And sh and but I it was done tastefully and respectfully. And so I thought it was great that they did that. Let me see, let's go back to some more of these comments here that David while uh Andy's doing that. Uh Dave said, Terry said they still have a working beta VCR. That is on my bucket list of items to get uh beta betamax VCR, and then I want a laser disc uh because to have this movie on a laser disc. I don't know if you guys have seen Laser Disc, but it was one of those okay. Let me see here. It's looking at the some of the other ones. Every movie can become a Bible study. And then it was an extra. Anybody else have any little comments or anything that this movie kind of spoke to you about whenever you first watched it the first time?

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Yeah, it was a real thing. I mean, I I went in the Air Force in '85 and served with a lot of people who were Vietnam vets, including one guy in the Air Force who was actually an army tunnel rat. You want to hear about a story? Ask a guy who was a tunnel rat what they did. Anyway, that was still a very real thing, even in the mid-80s. You know, after the you know, the whole Reagan thing about trying to restore pride was a true thing, but there was still a lot of resentment of Vietnam service people and even the Vietnam vets resenting the way they were treated. And and you know, it's a it's a wonderful thing that you know, especially since the Gulf War in '91 and the you know, the Iraq War and the Afghanistan wars, that society has started to try and recognize veterans more, but it's still, you know, if you're a veteran, you're a square peg in a round hole. I mean, you really are. Your whole your whole job is to learn how to break things and kill people on behalf of your country. And it's hard to be, quote, normal in society, any society after that.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

And you know, you guys remember for that scene in Forrest Gump where, you know, during the new year, where you have uh man, what was what what was his name?

SPEAKER_04 24:53

Um Lieutenant Dan, Gary Sinese.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Yes, Lieutenant Dan, where he's you know, the new year's coming, and then he's just sitting there depressed. And really the the whole arch of his of that guy of him just being uh just not being lonely because he came from from Vietnam. Andy, you there? Are we live again?

SPEAKER_05 25:17

Yeah, is it do we have the hero's journey up?

SPEAKER_03 25:20

We have the hero's journey up.

SPEAKER_05 25:21

Yeah, hey, sorry. I don't know what's happening, guys, but I I just think it's the devil not wanting us to get through this. So we'll do our best. Don't forget the hero's journey, Philippians 2, 5 through 11. The ultimate hero is Jesus Christ. And we find uh all of these movies when we talk about them wrapped up in Philippians 2, 5 through 11. So make sure you get the opportunity to take a look at that scripture and find out where we're grabbing some of these themes from. So Obi, let's get started with the very opening scene all alone. So that tells you a little bit about you know what his actual struggle and battle is going to be about.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

There's so much, there's so much happening in the scene, and it's just him walking. Um, and so there's a lot to see here. You take in him walking into you know, beautiful landscape, looking for his friend, uh, and comes to find out that you know his friend Elmar is gone.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

The last one, the last one of Baker team is is now gone. And what I love, just I want to point out in that very top scene, looks so peaceful, just a lonely guy out in the countryside, walking by himself. Man, you know, you could look at that and go, God, that guy looks so peaceful and quiet and living life, and there's a war going on inside of him. And how many men do we know that that might be going on inside of them? But we just see the outside, we just see the exterior of what might look peaceful, or what might look like a family going well, or what might look like life going well. And inside is a very, very lonely battle. And a lot of men go through this. And I just want to make sure that that's the reality that we see with one another is guys, don't look at another man and think he's got it all together. Recognize that every man at some point in time is going through a fairly significant battle mentally and emotionally. Really great that this movie falls in May. May is Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, Obi. So just recognizing mental and emotional health and wellness in men and how many of us go through it and and and struggle through this, uh, and really, you know, Obi, the background of how the MLC all got started during COVID. Amen. The isolation of a man who feels all alone.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Yeah. And what better scripture than Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 12? Uh, the danger of the lone wolf. Again, I saw something meaningless under the sun. There was a man all alone. He had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. For for who am I toiling? He asked. And why am I depriving myself of enjoyment? This too is meaningless. A miserable business. Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. If either of them falls down, one can help the other one up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.

SPEAKER_05 28:08

Which is the key scriptural line of this entire movie to the end. Yep. Right? Pity anyone, no matter how strong you think they are, no matter how peaceful they may look, who has no one to help them up.

unknown 28:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A court of three strands is not quickly broken.

SPEAKER_05 28:33

Yeah, and you know, just the very beginning is is this journey of being alone. Well, he he finds his way after recognizing his last friend Delmar has passed away from cancer due to agent orange. He keeps traveling, and thank God he's welcomed into hope. Man, isn't that great? He's walking. He's welcomed into hope. It's great. This guy needs hope. No, yeah, not how it goes.

SPEAKER_03 28:58

Not how he goes, guys. He gets confronted by Will, our town sheriff, and lets him know right away that hey, he you're not you're not welcome here.

SPEAKER_05 29:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

Um, and so what does he do? He drives them out of hope. And what does Rambo do? Rambo tries to walk back into hope, and hope is not where he is wanting it to be.

SPEAKER_05 29:25

Hey, can't I hope you guys are hearing that? He is trying to be welcomed into hope. He's driven out of hope by the sheriff, and he walks back into hope and is immediately arrested. Uh, you know, so the welcome wagon is not the one that any of us would want when we're desperately needing some hope. Hopefully, the MLC is a better welcome wagon, Obi, for guys that are desperately seeking hope. Hopefully, here, you know, we're doing a better job of that. So uh Teal's got just some great lines from the very beginning. You know, looking the way you do, you're asking for trouble. Really? So we're just measuring a man by the outside and how he looks. We're not getting to know him at all. He doesn't want to know his story. He is simply, you know, looking at the way he looks. Uh, you want some friendly advice? Get a haircut and take a bath. How many of us, though, who live in suburbia have this kind of prejudice deep down inside of us that we don't even know is there? But it is, you know, you wouldn't get hassled so much if you looked a little bit better and smelled a little bit cleaner. And then I love, he says, I hope this ride has helped you out. Have a nice day. He hasn't helped them in any way, he hasn't given them any good advice, he hasn't blessed him with anything. And then just that that last line, what do you hunt with a knife? Well, here it goes, name it. Which means, i.e., you keep pushing me, you, I'm gonna hunt you with this knife. Uh, you know, but people were asking what scripture are you gonna come up with for this? Well, he got the wrong welcome wagon. Scripture tells us there should have been a very different one. And Will Teasel, as the law, think of this, Obi, as the law of hope, right? Think of these words, as the law of hope, uh, should have been like the good Samaritan, but he was not. He was much more like the legal expert, right? Who wanted to justify himself and not have to love and take care of everyone, which is the point of this parable. The Good Samaritan is all about a legal expert who wanted to continue to keep things looking good superficially, to justify himself and didn't want to actually have to help those in need. So take us through this, Obi, it's a couple of slides.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

And on one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to Jesus. Teacher, he asked, What must I do to inherit eternal life? Well, what is written in the law? He replied, How do you read it?

SPEAKER_05 31:48

How do you read it? How does Teazel read the law? Right? That's kind of the point here.

SPEAKER_03 31:54

Yep. He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your might, and love your neighbor as yourself.

SPEAKER_05 32:02

Wait, do what? Say that one again.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Love your neighbor as yourself. Okay, get careful, Andy. We're I know getting crazy talk here. You have answered correctly, Jesus replied, Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he has Jesus. And who is my neighbor?

SPEAKER_05 32:22

And we do that all the time. Do I really have to love everyone? Uh, or can I just love the people that I want to love?

SPEAKER_03 32:29

And I think that's what really I think they were expecting him to say, everybody except this person I don't like.

unknown 32:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 32:35

This thing's locking up again.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

Uh and Jesus. Don't understand.

SPEAKER_05 32:39

Jesus. Can you hear me, Obi? Yeah, I can hear you, Andy. Okay. Well, the the cursor's just locked up again, guys. This is ridiculous. I don't know what's happening.

SPEAKER_03 32:48

Well, it's a good thing that I have the slide right here just in case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:52

Why don't you pull them? You don't have the finished product, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_05 32:56

It's gonna work better. Why don't you pull it up?

SPEAKER_03 32:59

Uh so it says, um, and so who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers, they stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wound, pouring oil and wine, then he put the man on his own donkey and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two dinari and gave them to the innkeeper, look after him, he said, And when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor? To the man who fell into the robbers. The expert in Allah replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, Go and do likewise. I really like this scene. I mean this part. Um if you did not know, the Samaritans were mixed, and boy, um the Hebrews did not the Jews did not like uh the Samaritans at all. So much um that they wouldn't even talk to them, they wouldn't even, you know, um so when Jesus is telling this story, you can you can feel the tension here as he's telling him uh hey, this guy is uh obviously the one who took care of him, the Samaritan, he made it really uh obvious. Now the other two, you know, there was an aspect of the law that really doesn't get talked about because you know, touching if you didn't know anything about the about you know their laws and stuff, touching uh somebody that was bloody, uh made that it would be that would be unclean, they would have to go back and do these expensive rituals to make themselves clean. Uh but the Samaritan didn't have that, so he took of him. And so this part right here, when he asked him which of these, which of these guys was uh um was the one that had mercy on him, um, he says, which of these do you think was a neighbor? And then the Jew doesn't even say that teacher doesn't even say the Samaritan. He didn't even s want to say his name. He said, the one who had mercy on him. And so Jesus told him, uh go and do likewise. I I love that story because he really flips everything down on his head, and and he tells him, Hey, you you guys are, yes, you guys are following the law, but you're missing the reason why the law exists. You're missing the most important part of it, which is the part about being mercy, and that's what happens here in this in this scene where you have the the you you have Will that's the sheriff that's trying to enforce the law because I you know he just you know at the time again there was this negative connotation that had that that the war view the war veterans had when they came home. It wasn't the warm reception that some of the World War II veterans got when they come home where they had parades. Uh, and so instead of seeing the person in need, he saw somebody that didn't meet his criteria, didn't uh look like the idea of what a person, an upstanding citizen, should look like. And so he kind of did the same thing that the Samaritans did and booted him out of town.

SPEAKER_05 36:47

You there, Andy? Yeah, back again. So try and keep going. I'm so sorry, guys. This is uh a new issue, but we'll get through it. So jump forward to scene two and him being mistreated in the jail.

SPEAKER_03 36:59

Yep. They uh they take him in, they you know, again, they once again they make an emphasis of showing that that giant knife, and uh they take him in and book him in. And I don't know if you notice uh on that on that top right slide, but you'll also notice that it's a young Horatio uh from CSI Miami, which I thought was a really, really cool treat to see there. I really was hoping to see him put his sunglasses and make like a make like a one-liner pun. But you see how he's mistreated, right? They have no reason to mistreat the guy, and you already see uh that Mr. Happy Stick right there, the who's just itching to put a wallop in on somebody, and uh he, you know, he already telling, I'm ready to dislike you, soldier.

SPEAKER_05 37:45

Yeah, isn't that isn't that you know what you want to see out of somebody who has authority in the city as somebody that's just ready to show how tough he is and beat people up. You know, that's the kind of cop you want to see. So, you know, unfortunately that's who he runs into. And we see then a first uh flashback or a first first hint that he might have some PTSD from his time in Vietnam when he sees the bars uh in the jail and he he's flashing back to the time where he was uh you know in the pit underground.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

Yeah, and they're throwing feces at him and how man, that was a powerful scene. And then they get him you know cleaned up. They again they put him in a like an animal, really, yeah, and and hose him down with uh with a fire hose.

SPEAKER_05 38:30

And if you don't know how painful that is for a fire hose to be shot at you, it's it's uh very painful.

SPEAKER_03 38:36

Yeah, and again, crazy Andy, and I really love that underneath what they did there with underneath the surface, you know, when they took his clothes off, he had all of these scars.

SPEAKER_05 38:47

Yeah, and I thought that was Which he's carrying with him everywhere that he goes, that he's not had anybody help him with them, but instead everybody's adding on to the scars that he has, which we'll see in just a minute.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Yep. Um, so what a good reference here, Andy, Leviticus 1933, 34. When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

SPEAKER_05 39:15

Yeah, and a good reminder. Hey, you remember when you were slaves to sin and you were set free. Now treat others with that kind of grace and freedom you've been given, and they're not doing any of that. They obviously have the prejudicial thought of being better than somebody like John Rambo and mistreating him instead of actually showing him the hospitality of a you know that that they should get.

SPEAKER_04 39:38

You know, there's three. Go ahead, go ahead. There's another callback to the Samaritan thing that you discussed from the previous scene. I mean, the Samaritans were in Jesus' time, this a lot of the Samaritans were descended from Jews of the original, you know, 12 tribes who collaborated with the Assyrians when the Assyrians invaded like 600 years before. And those 11 tribes in the north got wiped out, and they they assimilated and and fed into you know the Assyrian occupation. Well, here's Ramba, who's a kind of type of a Samaritan doing a good Samaritan work, and and his hosts in hope should have been good Samaritans and worse, but instead they looked at him as almost like a race traitor or a traitor because here was the guy who served him was just doing his job, and then they they target him for no reason.

SPEAKER_05 40:31

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, good insight, Dave. And then we get a little bit more here, Obi, of his the reality of PTSD and not understanding that men go through this or actually have some mental and emotional struggles in their life is pretty huge.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Yeah, and you know, they're trying to, you know, they think they're trying to do a good thing, but they're going about it the whole wrong way, right? And you know, and again, I get a I get a I got a glimpse of the Pharisees, you know, because they were trying to do this thing, just going about it the wrong way. Um, and we see him kind of this really sets him over the edge when they're trying to shape him, and it really sheds light into why he is the way he is, and the the sheds light into the the severe case of and and the reality that the scars just aren't the ones that he got physically on his body, but the scars that he has mentally and emotionally.

SPEAKER_05 41:22

And men don't like to talk about that, and we should share that more with each other is not only the physical scars that we bear, but the mental and emotional scars that we walk around with in our lives.

SPEAKER_03 41:32

Yeah, that finally sets us over the edge, like what happens here, and now we've unleashed something that we're not prepared for.

SPEAKER_05 41:40

Righteous recompense.

SPEAKER_03 41:41

The righteous recompense, woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people. What will you do on the day of reckoning when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Nothing will remain but to cringe among the captives of or fall among the slain. Yet for all of this his sanguers not turned away, his hand is still upraised.

SPEAKER_05 42:07

Yeah, so a little bit of uh, you know, do we know what we're doing to people when we're treating them unjustly, when we're mistreating them? That scripture says that is going to come back around on us, uh, you know, and it sure does. In the very next scene, it starts.

SPEAKER_03 42:22

We see that there's some, there's a lot more to Rambo than meets the eye because he quickly overpowers everybody that everybody in the police station uh and successfully runs away, grabs a motorcycle, and goes on a chase that ultimately leads to uh Will, Sheriff Will flipped over on the side of the road and calling for backup.

SPEAKER_05 42:46

Yeah. And I love two scenes from Sheriff Will. Number one, art don't shoot, there's people down there. He doesn't say art don't shoot because we don't shoot, you know, prisoners. We don't shoot people that we brought to jail. Art don't shoot because our people are down there.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

Well, you know, and art's art so art's so can consumed with wanting to to to you know make him pay on Russley paper something that he really disregards everybody else's safety and worries just about on his own rage.

SPEAKER_05 43:16

Yeah, false manhood leads the way with pride, and that's what's going on with art is he's been his pride has been bruised and he wants to get even. Yeah. I love the line though. He screams up at him as he's starting to run up the mountain, you're finished. Yeah, it hadn't even started yet.

SPEAKER_03 43:34

Uh so Psalm 7, one through two says, Lord my God, I take refuge in you, save me and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

And that's what's going on. They're they're now they're after them without any thought of justice or without any thought of you know the law in a positive way. They're now out to just tear them apart. Uh, you know, so. So in our own lives, sometimes when we feel like we're being pursued, we got to remember the Psalms were a great place to go for prayers when feeling like we're being pursued, whether it's by our old sinful nature, whether it's by the devil, or something that's actually happening in our lives in the world today. So I thought Psalm 7 was a pretty good reference there. Now we get up into the mountains and we ask the question, the hunted. Uh, and really we're gonna get into who's hunting who at this point.

SPEAKER_03 44:28

Yeah. Uh, and I love the quote. We'll get him, no problem. Yeah, is he supposed to be dangerous or just dumb?

SPEAKER_05 44:34

So he's climbing to the top of the mountain.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

Yeah. He's headed to the top. You see, he quickly, uh, you see the quickly he assesses the situation, um, takes care of his, you know, one of the things that they talk about in survival, you know, you want to get shelter, you want to get uh make sure that you're not that you don't lose heat. So he puts on uh he puts on that tarp that we talked about earlier and headed for the hills, gets cornered, and really jumps off of the jumps off of the cliff to get impelled by a tree. Uh, which the reason why he does that is because art, again, is trying to I mean he's trying he's yeah, he's trying to kill him. He's not trying to arrest him, he's not trying trying to bring him in. He's so, you know, hurt heartbroken or butthurt about his pride being broken that he got taken over in six other men that he wants to shoot him.

SPEAKER_05 45:30

So blinded by his pride and his anger that he even tells the helicopter pilot, if you don't fly this thing right, I swear to god, I'm gonna kill you. Like his rage is just gonna be unleashed on anybody because of his pride. And I think well, I don't think. I know that there have been times in my life where that has been the exact thought process going on in me as my pride was wounded so much that everybody was gonna pay the price. I didn't care who it was.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

And what does that lead to?

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah, and and can I say something quick? Yeah, Gunner? One of the one of the things that they don't kind of hit on maybe in the movie is just the fact that some of these officers might have actually even been in the war themselves.

SPEAKER_05 46:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

And they're still they're going through their own routine of PTSD.

SPEAKER_05 46:19

So you know, that I mean that's not hit upon really in the movie, but well, it could it could be true because they're why are they, you know, why are they policemen now back home?

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Exactly. That's where a lot of our soldiers and military go is by into the law enforcement. It's the closest thing to the civilian world that we could find to be able to still have the brotherhood. They still have the brotherhood, yeah. The same and the same fulfillment. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:50

There's a I posted in the chat, Gunner. I'm glad you said that. There's a scene where Will is leaning, goes in his office, and he's leaning, and I caught that this this this time go around. Um, he actually has three medals. I recognize a purple heart and that's recognized like a like a cross. So you have somebody that's already that's it's been in issues that understands what he's going through, and just you know, decides not to show mercy.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Well, the following orders in their own sense, and this is their new world order in a way of of this is what I have to do to to be the good soldier in my mind, you know, to where Rambo is he's the lone wolf right now. He's he's he's alone, he has no others that are part of his pack, so he has no guidance. Uh, but that doesn't mean that you can't lose control as if you're part of an organization, i.e., where he you know starts saying, I'm gonna kill this guy if you don't, you know, fly this helicopter type thing.

SPEAKER_05 47:58

It it goes to the point that arts, own mental and emotional issues, having you know fought in Vietnam, probably have not been dealt with. Right. You know. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and cumin, but you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides, you strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law, uh, and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

SPEAKER_05 48:50

Yeah, and I think that just kind of goes to the everything that's happened up to this point is Teasel and and and the rest of them, with all their struggles, sure, uh, but they're following the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law. They're wanting to look righteous on the outside, but they're not actually following mercy, justice, and righteousness, uh, which really leads to the whole uh you know, the whole scene of now uh Rambo hunting them. And they've they've they have poorly misjudged him and his uh not only not only his capabilities, but also the depth of his hurt, the depth of his scars mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

SPEAKER_03 49:31

Well, and even here and even here in this next whole scene, right? He he he shows them that he's not trying to kill them.

SPEAKER_05 49:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

Right. You're they they begin to quickly see that they underestimated his ability, his ability to be to survive.

SPEAKER_05 49:46

And it's hard. You know, there's one man dead, it's not my fault. I don't want any more hurt.

SPEAKER_03 49:51

Yeah. Um, you see that. Um, and and then they quickly realize, and I love the part where the I love this part where he says, We ain't hunting us, we ain't hunting him, he's hunting us. Yeah, you know, uh, and you know, Sheriff Wills just continued hard-headedness because he's again, he's so set on hurting him, on on making him pay that he's putting his own man at risk. You saw him earlier where they're the guys are like, Hey man, let's let's let's go home, you know. Uh, and he doesn't. And he one by one, he takes them out.

SPEAKER_05 50:24

There's no way out of here except through us. Okay, and he goes through them.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

He does go through them. Um, which leads to this very beautiful scene where he grabs Will and he puts the knife on his head and he's like, Let it go, let it go. He tells him, I could have killed them all, I could have killed you. Uh, and uh I love that they show Will just break down crying, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 50:48

And again, he's shown mercy, even though I mean, you know, the the the scene with the I couldn't get a good shot of the scene with the spikes in the legs because it was too dark. But you know, what he's done to him and and the slashing of the hamstring, yeah, that was pretty brutal, but he didn't kill him, and he's still showing mercy, and he's trying to tell Teasel that look, I could have killed you, I could have killed you all, but I showed mercy. Uh, and and it just after Teasel goes through his breakdown and cries, it just enrages him even more.

SPEAKER_03 51:18

Yeah, instead of instead of really we're realizing, hey, we need to we need to reassess the situation, let's push more and see who else can get hurt in the collateral damage of my own actions.

SPEAKER_05 51:29

And that whole in town, you're the law, out here it's me, don't push it, or I'll give you a war you won't believe. That's pretty, pretty impressive. So we get our leadership bomb of the week on what it means to actually misjudge people, and we do this all the time.

SPEAKER_03 51:44

Yeah. Uh, what's wrong with you guys? He's wall man and he's wounded. And then you should pick one hello guy to mess around with. This came over the teletype a few minutes ago. John Bramble is the Vietnam vet, he's a Green Beret Congressional Medal of Honor guy's a war hero.

SPEAKER_05 52:02

Yeah, and this is from 1 Samuel 16, 7, and it's when Samuel is called to go pick the next king of uh Israel after Saul. And he ends up picking David, which nobody would have picked David because he was a teenager, he was small and scrawny, and he was completely misjudged. So, how do we look at the measure of a man, Obi? Oftentimes we misjudge men the same way uh that they misjudged uh Rambo in the same way that you know the people misjudged David at the time.

SPEAKER_03 52:34

But the Lord said to Samuel, the Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

SPEAKER_05 52:41

Yeah, and I think that's really important to recognize again at the core of the movie, they're looking at the exterior of Rambo, that he's dirty, he's smelly, he looks like a you know, a vagrant, uh uh, you know, uh a wanderer and all this, but on the inside, his heart is torn apart and he's suffering and he's hurting, and nobody's looking at that or helping him with that. So just to keep that on our awareness with one another and other men. Well, then we get the introduction of Colonel Troutman. What a great character in the in the history of movies. Colonel Troutman is awesome, and the the lines that he spits out are just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

Yeah, those, and I just want to quote the the the the the keynote of this scene through here. You don't want you don't seem to want to accept the fact that you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, um, with a man who's the best with guns, with knives, with his bare hands, a man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke.

SPEAKER_05 53:42

And by the way, just remember this introductory scene, he's being given these as a whisper from somebody off camera, and this is him. I mean, what an amazing job of acting when he didn't even know the lines.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

He told powerful, he commands, yeah. He commands the scene, he commands the scene. Uh you know, Rambo idea. I did. Uh well, and you know, when he's talking to Sheriff Will, Sheriff Will is he reminded me a lot of Pharaoh, right? Where he's just will not let it go. He won't. He told he tells him exactly, listen, just leave him, leave him an opening, let him do, we'll pick him up later, right? And and then he tells him, I didn't come here to rescue Rambo from you, I came here to rescue you for Rambo. Epic, epic line. Right lines, yeah, yeah. Uh well, and even Troutman, you know, and I think he kind of knew when he's telling, strictly speaking, he slipped up. You're lucky to be breathing, but it wasn't, you know, he didn't slip up, he he let them live.

SPEAKER_05 54:43

Uh what he meant was from tactical warfare, he should have wiped all y'all out. We shouldn't even be talking right now. He should be onto another city somewhere without anybody knowing who he is or what he's up to. Uh, you know, and did he really slip up? That's that OB, I think you hit on a key thing. Did he really slip up, or is this the beginning of a cry for help that he didn't slaughter everyone, that he didn't do what he did back in Vietnam, that he is wanting to see some some actual transformation and change, and he's wanting help. Is there a cry for help in this movie? And I think the answer is yes.

SPEAKER_03 55:19

Yes, screaming cry for help.

SPEAKER_05 55:21

Yeah, this is also goes with the same scene with Troutman, and he's calling then in uh to uh Rambo from Baker Team.

SPEAKER_03 55:30

Yeah, and you know, this is right after you know, he's in the cave. Rambo shows him taking on a giant hogzilla, kills it with his bare hands with his knife, and you see him eating uh and sitting alone in the cave, and now he's finally hearing a familiar voice, and that's Baker Team, and that's you know, he's kind of calling him to kind of regress him back to to his team, which is really what what Ramble longs for.

SPEAKER_05 55:56

Yeah, right. He says they're all gone, sir. Baker team, they're all dead. That tells you what's going on in his heart, the grief that he's not able to express to anyone that he shares for the first time with Troutman.

SPEAKER_03 56:10

Yeah, and you know, uh Troutman tells Will, Sheriff Will, you know, he he he's kind of foreshadowing. He tells him uh in Vietnam his job was to dispose of enemy personnel to kill, period, win by attrition. Rambo was the best. You won a war you can't win. And then Sheriff Will tells him, You telling me 200 men against your boys, a no-win situation for us. And he tells him, You send that many, don't forget one thing, a good supply of body bags.

SPEAKER_05 56:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

Because do you understand?

SPEAKER_05 56:40

Yeah, he understands what he's capable of, but even Troutman still yet doesn't fully understand what's going on inside his heart. Uh, you know, and and I love that line where Troutman goes, No, Delmar still Delmar made it back. Delmar made it back, and he goes, No, sir. He got killed in Vietnam and didn't even know it. He brought it back home with him. You know, so you know, those kind of lines are pretty powerful. He got killed in Vietnam and didn't know it, he brought it back with him. You know, there's a depth of this character that goes far beyond an action film that we're being that we're starting to be given a little bit of, you know, insight into, just a hint here and there. Yeah. Now, somebody, you know, I think that a couple of guys said, How are you gonna handle this scene in that line? They drew first blood, they drew first blood. How are you gonna handle that? And I think that's key to the entire movie, obviously. So we're gonna go through four slides real quick on different ways of recognizing how to respond to this line, they drew first blood. And the first one is, do we recognize, even when you look at the old testament and in the Psalms, which Psalm 144 is a praise psalm, by the way, that David talks about God training soldiers. So the soldier does have a place and does have a purpose in the world. Uh, and God trains them and actually gives them the skill to do what they do. And I want to honor that and say scripture honors that, David honors that, we should honor that.

SPEAKER_03 58:09

Yep. Praise be to the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me.

SPEAKER_05 58:22

Yeah, so there's a reality of God training soldiers, but then here's the struggle. Here's the struggle that Rambo himself is going through, is discerning the times.

SPEAKER_03 58:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 58:32

Is he actually still a soldier? Is he a civilian? What's the battle that's going on inside of him? And is that battle confusing his ability to discern the times? And I think this is huge for all of us as men, Obi. We think we know who we are, we think we know what we're here for, but things take place in our lives inside that interior battle with us that make it very challenging to discern the times without a brotherhood. Because indeed, we're going to see there's a time to kill, a time to hate, a time for war. But when is that time? And are we to discern that by ourselves, or are we to discern that in a company of brothers? And this is what Rambo's struggling with is discerning the times of now making the move from being a soldier in war now back to civilian life, which he cannot transition into alone. And it has not gone well. So I thought this was a beautiful set of verses to better understand the challenge that he's going through, trying to discern his role in the world now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:34

There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for place.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:12

Uh and that last one, a time for war and a time for peace is what he's having a challenge discerning. Because there is no peace inside of him. There's still a war raging. Uh, and this is one of the key aspects of the MLC and the Brotherhood is discerning the times and where God has placed us and what our response should be. Well, Jesus shows up on the scene then as the savior of the world, Obi, and he gives us new insight on how to respond to evil, uh, how he responds to evil. And this takes place in Matthew chapter 5, his great Sermon on the Mount. Uh, and he changes then what it means for him to respond to those who would act evil towards him.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:51

You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his son to rise on both the evil and the good, and sends rain both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you and if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:23

So all of a sudden we get the great challenge that's actually impossible apart from Jesus Christ, alive in our hearts through the Holy Spirit to love your enemy. And I want you guys to know that it's impossible to love your enemy apart from Christ. Uh, so then what does that mean for us in the MLC as brothers? Uh, so the Christ followers' response now, brothers, is from Romans 12. This is Paul. Now, after Christ's ascension back into heaven, the beginning of the church and what it should look like for the church to uh, you know, respond to evil in the world.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:55

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge. I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him a drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:23

So I think, you know, Obi, as we put these together, what do you think? And in the full recognition, celebration, and honor that God actually trains soldiers for their role. But there are moments where it's challenging to discern the seasons and the times in our lives of what's taking place. That's why we go to Christ and see what his words say to us, and then we meet with the Brotherhood to encourage one another to do the right thing even when we don't want to.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

And it's not easy. You know, uh, there's there's times when it won't be easy.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:54

No, and that might be a way to that might be a way to handle they drew first blood, they drew first blood, is recognizing better the inner turmoil and the inner warfare that's taking place in Rambo rather than is it okay, you know, uh, you know, to avenge and repay evil, but better yet, especially set inside this movie, do we understand the inner battle that's taking place inside that man and that he's going through it all alone?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:21

Yeah, I think that's the that's the big takeaway from that.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:25

All right, just a couple slides more. Now we get to we get to playing soldier. Uh so and here's my scene I referenced earlier for my brother-in-law Jay. Jason, you weren't on earlier, I think, when this was going down, but Gunner was talking and giving you some love. Uh, but I said, hey, we're gonna get to a scene actually in the movie that references Jay, my brother Jason, in the movie. Will come on, I gotta get back to the drugstore tomorrow. If you guys don't know, Jay runs a drugstore in El Dorado. So, Jay, this scene's for you, brother.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:56

Oh, yeah. Do you see the National Guard now, you know, coming after him? He's locked in a cage, he's uh trapped in a in a in a mine, an old mine, and these guys really escalate things, you know, aside from the fact that Will, the sheriff will had told him, hey, don't fire, just wait till I get there. These guys are so eager to dole out justice and fire their weapons that they just, I mean, all of them were just shooting at it like it like like they were actually in Vietnam. Uh, and even escalating it to the point where one of them pulls out a bazooka and just blows up the the entrance, you know. And he's the guy with the mustache and the glasses that says, Wow, we got him.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:40

Yeah, and not understanding the reality of what's going on, but just playing at Soldier a little bit and not understanding the inner turn turmoil that's going on inside Rambo. Uh, you know, is that at the end after they blow up the mine shaft, there they are holding up a stick like it's Iwo Jima.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:56

You know, trying to recreate the the scene and really making a lot of a making a lot of a really uh of a really serious situation.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:08

And I love that. Uh yeah, I love the way he says, Rambo, this is Lieutenant Clinton Morgan. You're like, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:16

National Guard leader. I'm giving you this. Uh so they blow up the entrance, and now Rambo is seemingly trapped inside of the the cave, them old mineshaft, hopeless, I guess. Will this be the end of Rambo?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:32

Yeah. So the danger of incompetence, men, in our lives. Luke 6, 39 through 40. Jesus talks about the danger of incompetence. I thought this was a good one to go go with this scene, Obi.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:45

He also told them this parable can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:54

Yeah, and these guys are not fully trained. I love that. Raymond, Raymond, I want you to go into that mind shaft and give. Him out and room and goes, I'm not going in there. I just part-time. I can't come here to die. I don't think he's been fully trained yet. So uh, and obviously, I got to get back to the drugstore. There's this recognizing that you have these part-time national guard against a fully trained right killing machine from the Vietnam War. Um you see incompetence versus competence.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

So definitely uh Rambo's making his way through the cave in the dark. I'll tell you guys as somebody who doesn't like rats, that scene was everything that I that I have nightmares about is being trapped in the dark in the water with rats on my back.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:43

Assuming the last crude this one in The Last Crusade. If you haven't seen uh Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade in that scene with all the rats, oh I this that would be it for me, really.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:54

I that that gave made my skin crawl. But he makes his way out um and makes his way towards the city because now they've declared war on him and now he's he's going to do what he does best.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:08

So Requiem is a lament, a sad song that's written for the uh the deceased, someone who has passed away. So you kind of see uh Teasel and Troutman kind of going through this Requiem that he's dead. Uh, but behind the scenes, what you see while they're talking about him being dead, no, he's he's still in survival mode and still working his way through the cave.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:30

Yeah, and I love the I love what Troutman says, you know, that's gonna look real good on his gravestone in Arlington. Here lines John Rambo, winder of the winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, survivor of countless incursions behind enemy lines, killed for vagrancy in Jerkwater, USA. Because he's realized now that the the really the reason why this has happened is because of the pride of the sheriff.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:52

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:54

And you get an you get an insight of that into his blind rage because he tells him, I wanted to kill that kid.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:01

Danny, you know, he has remorse at the moment because when Troutman says doesn't sit well with that badge, does it? Uh he he recognizes that his desire to want to kill that kid was wrong, but yet when he finds out he's still alive, he jumps right back into unfortunately that rage and that anger.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:20

Yeah. And one way or another, he's gonna finish it. Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:24

Absolutely. Yeah. So I thought this is interesting. You know, several times, what kind of verses are they gonna come up with? So him going through that cave, uh, and having to go, he actually has to go down before he can come up. I thought of Jonah having to go down, down, down, all the way down into the belly of the whale, uh, before he, you know, God brings him back up and spits him back out onto the beach. So I thought this was very interesting in understanding an uprising. You got to go to the depths before you come back up.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:52

In my distress, I called to the Lord and he answered me from the deep in the realm of the dead. I called for help, and you listened to my cry. You hurled me to the depths, into the very hearts of the seas, and the currents rolled about me. All your waves and breakers swept over me. The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head to the roots of the mountains. I sank rats, rats were wrapped around his head, but same thing. Uh I sank down to the earth beneath barred me in forever, but you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:25

Yeah, so uh, you know, in the very midst of others believing that he was dead, he rises back up, and then finally, here we go to our closing scene, and this is the most important, uh, obviously, aspect of the entire movie that's hiding under the surface. We only get glimpses of, but we get it here.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Yeah, and you know, the collateral damage of trying to do of trying to repress and carry all of that. Um, there's just collateral damage all around him. You see that that he blows up a gas station, that he shoots out windows, he blows up um an ammo store, and and you know, now you're seeing that it's there's gonna be a reckoning.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:07

Yep. Right? Yep. Um and you But that reckoning is actually Rambo's cry for help to Troutman in the very last lines of the movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:18

That that is, you know, and and you finally see that he's um he's actually taken down Sheriff Will. He shoots him, he's trying to hide and kill him, still, um, you know, and when he had when he's laying on the table, you know, on the ground, you know, you see Tramman come out and says, Hey, don't do it. Don't do it. And this is where you get the scene where, you know, he's, you know, he starts crying and he says, It wasn't my war, you asked me. I didn't ask you. And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport protesting me, spitting, calling me a baby killer, and all kinds of wild crap. Who are they to protest me unless they they've been me, been there. They don't know what the hell they're talking, they're yelling about.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:04

And you know, we get great insight through that line, and then through his breakdown scene at the very end, you know, where is everybody? Back there, I had all these friends. Here there's nothing. I don't talk to anyone. And now, what a lot of people still don't recognize about this film, the entire film, the mini-war that takes place in the middle of it, every aspect of this movie is a cry for help. And yet at the very end, he finally gets to have this discussion with Troutman where he gets to have this cry for help and he tells the stories of his brothers in arms over in Vietnam and what happened to him, you know, uh getting blown up and in, you know, body parts from his buddies being all over him. And, you know, just a beautiful scene, but the cry for help is the whole point of the movie. And I wonder if we don't recognize that as men, that we are all crying for help at different times in our lives and need other brothers there to not only listen to us, but the most powerful scene in the entire movie is Troutman, a hardened soldier himself. When when when Johnny, when Rambo actually falls into him and leans into him and hugs him. Thank God Troutman wrapped his arms around him and patted him on the head instead of, you know, oh God, it's what he needed.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:18

So he reaches, yeah, he reaches out to him. Yeah, Rambo actually reaches out to him and try, you know, pulls him in because that's what he needs. That's what he's that's what he's been longing for. And it's heartbreaking, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:32

Do we listen? Do we listen when other men are giving a cry for help? Do we hear it? Do we recognize it? Do we then grab hold of them when they grab are reaching out for us? And that's what's so beautiful about that scene is Troutman does reach back around him and grab him. Uh, and he responds to that cry for help because he now recognized. I don't think Troutman recognized, even though he'd been through battle himself, I don't think he recognized the depth of the mental and emotional scars that Rambo had until the very end. But he listens and he hears it. He hears that cry for help and he responds. So we got several really great verses for this that I want you guys. I think it's three, three slides or so. Three great cries for help uh that come from different aspects of scripture.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:21

I cry aloud to the Lord, I lift my voice to the Lord for mercy, I pour out before him my complaint, before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint, faint within me. It is you who watch over my way. In the path where I walk, people have hidden a snare for me. Look and see. There is no one at my right hand, no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge, no one cares for my life.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:45

Boy, and I think that describes Rambo at in that moment at the very end with Troutman. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:50

Yeah. Uh turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish. Look on my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins. See how numerous are my enemies and how fiercely they hate me.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:06

Yeah, how great is that with his final lines.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:09

Uh, and finally, uh, all my longings lie open before you, O Lord. My sighting is not hidden from you, my heart panels, my strength fails me, even the light has gone from my eyes. My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds, my neighbors stay far away.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:27

They'll say, let's just stop right there. My friends and companions stay away from me because of my wounds. And I think that's how we act as men sometimes. You know, hey, how are you doing? And we want to hear in response, I'm fine, things are going well. We don't actually want to hear the cry for help.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:47

Yeah. So we at times in our own lives can be the friends and companions that stay away because of another brother's wounds. So we got to open ourselves up to this cry for help. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:58

Those who want to kill me set their traps. Those who would harm me talk of my ruin. All day long they scheme and lie. I am like the deaf who cannot hear, like the mute who cannot speak. I have become like one who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply. Lord, I wait for you. You will answer, Lord my God, for I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.

unknown 1:15:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:20

And my pain is ever with me. You know, so very powerful lines at the at the end that I think go with some really powerful scripture there too. Uh Obi, we went obviously over and had some technical problems, but we got through it all. We made it through. But Obi, would you mind saying a quick prayer for us and then we can have guys that want to hang on, we can have a little bit more discussion about the movie.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:40

Um Lord, as we uh as we go as finish this series, you know, something that's trivial as movies. Um, I know that you even you use those things even uh to speak to the hearts of man as a way to soften uh people's defenses. Would you would you allow everyone that's here and that's listening to soften their hearts, to allow themselves to be open, honest, and vulnerable, so that uh you may begin healing. You never force yourself on us. And it is uh it is in those moments of vulnerability where we acknowledge our weakness and our dependence on you that you begin to work. So I pray over all our man that you will give us the courage to be open, honest, and vulnerable with each other. We love you, and it's in your name we pray.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:36

Amen. Thanks for joining and listening. We hope that you were truly blessed. Now you can join the live call every Friday morning at 7 a.m. Central Standard Time, and please bring a friend. And to learn more about the MLC, visit our website at the MLC.life. That's the MLC. Have a great day.